
Exceptionalism
2


I was in a slump and felt overwhelmed by all the revelations that politics as usual is all about acquiring and retaining power. It happens on both sides of the aisle, but Republicans, I’m convinced – because they’re wealthier and have more to lose – are better at it. And that was before RBG died (see an RBG post from 2014 with video), prompting Republicans to activate their pituitary glands once again for the world to see! So, I sketched out one of my stock, bald-headed “establishment” guys in Sketch Club on my iPad. I copied it, flipped it, added some more details, tweaked it a little in iColorama while recording the “movement,” and then finally editing the video with a soundtrack in Videoshop. As I did this, I realized I was working through an insight, or at least a suspicion, that we attach ourselves to mental constructs, even our sense of self, with whom we dance and dance and dance, as reality goes on in the overlooked background. It’s so hard to detach or let go, but very little acceptance can occur until we do.
See other toons: https://portfoliolongo.com/trump-gallery/
BEHIND THE SCENES: For weeks now, an evasive idea has been trying to form itself on my cognitive drawing board, having to do with depictions of absurd, segregated services reserved for conservatives or liberals. At first I thought of separate traffic lights at any given intersection, one set of red lights for the conservatives and another for the liberals. Then I realized how unlikely it would be, in such an imagined reality, that conservatives and liberals would even share the same roads. If nothing else, there would have to be fancy toll roads for conservatives only and old, beat up, public roads for the liberals. So I scratched that.
Then notions of segregated meteorological services for conservatives and liberals began appearing on my internal drawing board. I imagined a conservative weatherperson standing in the pouring rain with a mic in one hand and an umbrella in the other outlining the counter factuals: sunny, low humidity, time for a picnic. You know, “fake weather.” But then a staff researcher found the YouTube video below, published way back in 2012. Damn it! That’s when I decided to go with the simple shit storm forecast.